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With sweaty palms and hopes of scoring a spot in the working world, college seniors across the nation are preparing to don professional attire, submit their resumés and answer interview questions. Each member of the Class of 2014 will endure a period of self-assessment and review, considering how a school choice made four years earlier affects his or her job prospects. Before becoming graduates, these young adults will ponder over whether or not four years of college experience were worth their financial cost.

The collective response regarding the value of higher education will likely be increasingly negative. While recent graduates search for short term stability, they carry the heavy burden of long-term student loan debt, a challenge relatively unknown to prior generations. Statistics paint a grim picture of their futures. Since the early 1980s, the price of a four year degree has practically quadrupled, marking a trend that does not seem to be losing momentum. To meet the burden of higher prices, students have had to borrow at more substantial levels. In fact, between 2007 and 2010, the number of American families that held student loan debt jumped from 33 to 45 percent.[i]

Consequently, as these young adults move off college campuses and into the workforce, they experience a sense of intense doubt. They must assess how the marketability of their degrees affects their competitiveness in the face of an unstable, opaque job market. Considering the burden of college costs and financing, today’s graduate must be more concerned than ever with the viability of his institution’s image, reputation and quality.

A college’s brand matters. Christina Bielaska-Duvernay of Harvard Business Review defines brand as a promise that creates a lasting relationship.[ii] In the context of higher education, this relationship consists of an interaction between the institution and the public. Each university represents a different set of values and possesses its own unique attributes. It fosters a brand specifically to represent this uniqueness. As a whole, the brand influences the way others, such as employers, look at individual graduates’ potential to perform.

It is, therefore, imperative that we, as student leaders, inculcate a sense of ownership of the “brand” amongst the students and staff of our respective institutions. If we can accomplish this goal, we will improve the standing of our universities, and our own marketability. To take possession of a university’s “brand”, administration, faculty, and students will need to be personally invested in enhancing the college experience.

University and college administrations should increase the value of their brands by developing strategic corporate partnerships. These partnerships are two-fold; by providing financial support, corporations can lower the administrative costs for the university while also lending their name and credibility to the university’s degrees and programs. The London Business School and the Georgia Institute of Technology’s Technology and Management program already have working models using this collaborative process.[iii],[iv] Corporations benefit by gaining access to top talent, brand visibility to students, recognition both inside and outside the university, and innovative solutions to real problems through the use of capstone projects. For their part, students gain real world experience, degree legitimacy, and a corporate subsidized educational experience. Ultimately, such strategic relationships provide a sense of prestige to the reputation of the university, as well as the diplomas of its graduates.

Additionally, the university administration needs to improve the resources available to students to allow them to effectively leverage their brand. College presidents and their staff must recognize that marketability matters to the modern graduate. Services such as career education and development must take a more prominent role in academic life in order to prepare students to distinguish themselves in the increasingly competitive job market.

Students have to recognize that the duty to improve the brand is as much ours as it is the institution. We must hold ourselves accountable and recognize how our attitudes affect the brand. College students cannot remain complacent; if we want the university name on our degrees to hold significance, we should mold our attitudes and behaviors to live up to our institutions’ values. Students must take advantage of all of the opportunities for which we pay. It is crucial that we squeeze all the juice that we can out of the costly college experience to better position ourselves in today’s global market.

The views expressed herein are those of the authors and do not purport to reflect the position of the United States Military Academy, the Department of the Army, or the Department of Defense.